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These are the measures, Mr. President, that have been adopted; these are the orders that have been issued by the intendant general, to every district of the Spanish provinces, prohibiting the subjects of his Catholic majesty from hav ing any cominerce, dealing, intercourse, or communion whatsoever with the citizens of the United States, excluding us from their shores for the distance of two hundred and seventy miles, treating us like a nation of pirates, or a banditti of robbers, who they feared to trust in their country; and this day sir, if a vessel belonging to a citizen of the United States, engaged in a fair and legal trade, was upon the waters of the Mississippi, within the Spanish lines, and in a state of the most extreme distress, the Spaniard who should yield her aid or comfort, would do it at the peril of his life.

But why do we confine ourselves to the Mississippi, almost every part of the world furnishes us with causes of complaint against the Spaniards, scarcely a mail has arrived for a year past, that has not brought us some account of their outrages upon our commerce. They insult our national flag upon every sea where they meet it....they seize our merchantmen....they plunder our merchants of their property....they abuse our seamen....shackle them with chains, and consign them to dungeons....and yet honorable gentlemen cry out peace, peace, when there is no peace. If this be peace, God give us war! And pray, Mr. President, what have we done to provoke all this? We have violated no treaty with his Catholic majesty, we have injured none of his subjects, we have depredated no where upon his commerce; rather than offend him, when he has smitten us on one cheek, with Christian meekness, we have turned the other....he has made no complaint against us; he has no cause of complaint....he does not even condescend to seek a justification for his conduct; none could be found....but it originates in a deliberately formed system of insult and abuse, and he is proceeding, step by step, to ascertain how long the people of the United States will suffer themselves. to be trampled upon with impunity. We have seen him on our lines, wantonly infract his solemn treaty, and his subjects are at this moment, under our very eyes, acting in open violation of its best provisions, by withholding from our citizens the all important right it guarantees to them of navigating freely the Mississippi....a right essential to their very existence as a people....a right that can never be aban

doned by them, but with their lives; nor yielded by us, but with our national honor..

If it should be said, sir, that this important question will not long be an affair of controversy between the United States and Spain: that Louisiana, New Orleans, and this usurped claim of the Spanish government to the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, will soon be found in other hands....that whenever we may have to negociate on this subject, either in the cabinet or the field, it will not be with his Catholic majesty, but with the first Consul; not with a king, but with the king of kings; I answer that in these insults to our national diguity, we at present know no power. but Spain....whatever agency Bonaparte may have had in this business, he has been concealed from our view. It is Spain that has violated her plighted faith....it is Spain that has trampled upon the dearest interests of the United States, and insulted our government to our faces without the semlance of a cause, and she alone is responsible to us for these outrages. And, under such circumstances, is it becoming, politic, or honorable in us to treat her as a friend, and as a neighbor; to remonstrate with her on her acts of injustice, and wait till she shall add insult to insult, and heap injury upon injury; or what is perhaps even worse, if any thing worse than national degradation can befal an independent people, till this golden opportunity shall have passed away, and the facility of redress be wrested from our hands? No sir, we should now view her as our open enemy, as having declared war against us, and do justice to ourselves. We can never have permanent peace on our western waters, till we possess ourselves of New Orleans, and such other positions as may be necessary to give us the complete and absolute command of the navigation of the Mississippi....We have now such an opportunity of accomplishing this important object as may not be presented again in centuries, and every justification that could be wished, for availing ourselves of the opportunity. Spain has dared us to the trial, and now bids us defiance; she is yet in possession of that country, it is at this moment within your reach and within your power, it offers a sure and easy conquest; we should have to encounter there now, only a weak, inactive, and unenterprizing people; but how may a few months vary this scene, and darken our prospects: though not officially informed, we know that the Spanish provinces on the Mississippi have been ceded to the French, and that they will as

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soon as possible take possession of them. What may we then expect? When in the last extremity we shall be driven to arms in defence of our indisputable rights....where now slumbers on his post with folded arms the sluggish Span ard, we shall be hailed by the vigilant and alert French grena lier, and in the defenceless garrison that would now surrender at our approach, we shall see unfurled the standards that have waved triumphant in Italy, surrounded by impregnable ramparts, and defended by the disciplined veterans of Egypt.

I am willing, sir, to attribute to honorable gentlemen the best of motives, I am sure they do not wish to involve this country in a war, and God knows, I deprecate its horrors. as much as any man; but this business can never be adjusted abroad....it will ultimately have to be settled upon the banks of the Mississippi, and the longer you delay, the more time you waste in tedious negociations, the greater sacrifices you make to protract a temporary and hollow peace, the greater will be your embarrassments when the war comes on, and it is inevitable, unless honorable gentlemen, opposed to us, are prepared to yield up the best interests and honor of the nation....I believe the only question, now in our power to decide, is whether it shall be the bloodless war of a few months, or the carnage of years.

These observations, Mr. President, are urged upon the supposition that it is in the power of the government to restrain the impetuosity of the western people, and to prevent their doing justice to themselves, which, by the bye, I beg to be understood as not believing, but expressly the contrary. They know their own strength....they know the feebleness of the enemy....they know the infinite importance of the stake, and they feel, permit me to say sir, with more than mere sensibility, the insults and injuries they have received; they are now all alive on this subject, and I believe will not submit, even for the approaching season, to their present ruinous and humiliating situation.... You had as well pretend to dam up the mouth of the Mississippi, and say to its restless waves, ye shall cease here, and never mingle with the ocean, as to expect they will be prevented from descending it. Without the free use of the river, and the necessary advantages of deposit below our line, their fertile country is not worth possessing, their produce must be wasted in their fields, or rot in their granaries....these are rights not only guaranteed to them by treaty, but given to them by the God of nature, and they will enforce them with, or without the authority of the government; and let me ask,

sir, whether it is most dignified for the government to lead or follow in the path of honor; one it must do, or give up that western country. But, independent of these considerations, those people have other solid claims upon the govern ment for immediate support. Under your auspices, and with the promise of your protection, at the hazard of their lives, they explored and settled a wilderness; the lonely desert they have transformed into cultivated fields, the haunt of the wild beast, they have made the seat of science, and where but a few years since was heard only the savage yell, their industry and enterprize have reared towns and villages, and planted polished societies. They are our fellow citizens, our friends and our brothers, and we are bound by every obligation of good faith, and every sentiment of honor, not to abandon them for a moment. It is now in our power, without difficulty or danger, to redress their wrongs, and to remove forever, the possibility of like indignities to the nation....But, Mr. President, let Bonaparte once take quiet possession of the mouth of the Mississippi, and we shall have a war indeed: nothing but the length of our swords, and the best blocd of our citizens will ever make it ours.... his objects is universal dominion: and the hero of Italy, the military despot of France, a man whose towering ambition bestrides the world, whose will is now the law of nations, with fifty million of people, and the resources of Europe at his command, will be a foe not easily vanquished; and I repeat sir, let him only set his foot on that shore, let him but plant a single standard there, and he will never yield it but by inches, to superior force. He knows well the value of the position, he knows that it must become one of the first in the world, and that it now offers higher temptations to a powerful, ambitious, and intriguing people than any place on earth. It is the only key to the immense regions watered by the Mississippi and its tributary streams, to a country, larger in extent than all Europe, surpassed by no portion of the world in fertility of soil, and most of it, in climate, a paradise.

But, Mr. President, what is more than all to be dreaded, in such hands, it may be made the means of access, and corruption to your national councils, and a key to your treasury. Your western people will see in Bonaparte, at their very doors, a powerful friend or a dangerous enemy....and should he, after obtaining complete control over the navigation of the Mississippi, approach them, not in the menacing attitude

of an enemy, but under the specious garb of a protector and a friend...,should he, instead of embarrassing their commerce by any fiscal arrangements, invite them to the free navigation of the river, and give them privileges in trade not heretofore enjoyed....should he, instead of attempting to coerce them to his measures, contrary to their wishes, send missionaries into their country to court and intrigue with them, he may seduce their affections, and thus accomplish by address and cunning, what even his force might not be equal to. In this way having operated upon their passions, having enlisted in his service, their hopes and their fears, he may gain an undue ascendancy over them. Should these things be effected, which God forbid, but Bonaparte in a few years has done much more, what, let me ask honorable gentlemen, may be the consequences? I fear even to look them in the face. The degraded countries of Europe, that have been enslaved by the divisions and distractions of their councils, produced by similar means, afford us melancholy examples. Foreign influence will gain admittance into your national councils, the First Consul, or his interests, will be represented in the Congress of the United States, this floor may become the theatre of sedition and intrigue.... You will have a French faction in the government, and that faction will increase, with the rapidly increasing population of the western world. Whenever this period shali arrive, it will be the crisis of American glory, and must result, either in the political subjugation of the Atlantic states, or in their separation from the western country; and I am sure there is no American who does not view as one of the greatest evils that could befal us, the dismemberment of this union. Honorable gentlemen may wrap themselves up in their present imaginary security, and say that these things are afar off, or that they can never happen; but let me beseech of them to look well to the measures they are now pursuing, for on the wisdom, the promptness and energy of those measures, will depend whether they shall happen or not.... And let me tell them, sir, that the want of firmness or judgment in the cabinet, will be no apology for the disgrace and ruin of the nation.

A single moment more, Mr. President, till I call to the recollection of gentlemen the language of experience, and endeavor to impress upon their minds yet stronger, the importance of the resolutions on your table. One of the first statesmen ofthe age we live in, the celebrated Mr. Fox, in

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